Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ideas
Review: You can share the author's thrill of discovery as she uncovers something new about ourselves and our visual culture. The Substance of Style is a fascinating and well-thought out book that is hard to put down. As an artist and art professor I find particularly refreshing Postrell's insights and informed optimism about the immediate future of art and design in the world. Postrel has done her homework on art, design, and aesthetics. As an outsider to the artworld (an economist writing for publications ranging from the New York Times and Reason Magazine), she offers new insights in the stuffy and exclusive club of academia, aesthetics, and art theory. Such cross-fertilization of disciplines offers the potential for break-though observations. Postrel's book proves this point by introducing consumer preferences, the creativity and competition of the marketplace, and product distinction as central to "good" design. The author gains from others who have likewise crossed their disciplines with art and aesthetics. The observations and findings of noted anthropolgist, Ellen Disanyake is an example. Disanyake studied the visual arts in a wide range of non-western cultures and found some basic similarities in why art (and decorative artifacts)are produced. Essentially she claims that art is "to make something special." That's it. And in a marketplace driven economy such as the United States, this function of art (and design) is finally being recognized and treasured again after decades of confusion and inreasing academic exclusiveness about the purpose of art. I particularly enjoy Postrel's tongue in cheek summay of form-follows-function purism. She proposes something that must infuriate the purists; A chair's purpose is not to express a modernist idea of "chairness," but instead is to please its owner. Enjoyment and pleasure are attitudes that too much of the artworld has lost. I find Postrel's anti-establishment writings to be similar to those of distingushed architectural revolutionaries Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and James Wines. Her critical eye also is reminscent of author Tom Wolfe ("From Our House to Bauhaus") as he roasts society's self appointed guardians of good taste. Virgiinia Postrel builds a convincing and optimisitic case on the role of art and design that must dismay Marxists and others with a negative world view. She does not buy into the premise that that the function of good design is subservient to solving world problems. The function of good design she argues is simply to make life enjoyable. Not a bad idea... but that pisses off a lot of people.
Rating: 
Summary: Form follows emotion, NOT form follows function.
Review: You can share the author's thrill of discovery as she uncovers something new about ourselves and our visual culture. The Substance of Style is a fascinating and well-thought out book that is hard to put down. As an artist and art professor I find particularly refreshing Postrell's insights and informed optimism about the immediate future of art and design in the world. Postrel has done her homework on art, design, and aesthetics. As an outsider to the artworld (an economist writing for publications ranging from the New York Times and Reason Magazine), she offers new insights in the stuffy and exclusive club of academia, aesthetics, and art theory. Such cross-fertilization of disciplines offers the potential for break-though observations. Postrel's book proves this point by introducing consumer preferences, the creativity and competition of the marketplace, and product distinction as central to "good" design. The author gains from others who have likewise crossed their disciplines with art and aesthetics. The observations and findings of noted anthropolgist, Ellen Disanyake is an example. Disanyake studied the visual arts in a wide range of non-western cultures and found some basic similarities in why art (and decorative artifacts)are produced. Essentially she claims that art is "to make something special." That's it. And in a marketplace driven economy such as the United States, this function of art (and design) is finally being recognized and treasured again after decades of confusion and inreasing academic exclusiveness about the purpose of art. I particularly enjoy Postrel's tongue in cheek summay of form-follows-function purism. She proposes something that must infuriate the purists; A chair's purpose is not to express a modernist idea of "chairness," but instead is to please its owner. Enjoyment and pleasure are attitudes that too much of the artworld has lost. I find Postrel's anti-establishment writings to be similar to those of distingushed architectural revolutionaries Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and James Wines. Her critical eye also is reminscent of author Tom Wolfe ("From Our House to Bauhaus") as he roasts society's self appointed guardians of good taste. Virgiinia Postrel builds a convincing and optimisitic case on the role of art and design that must dismay Marxists and others with a negative world view. She does not buy into the premise that that the function of good design is subservient to solving world problems. The function of good design she argues is simply to make life enjoyable. Not a bad idea... but that pisses off a lot of people.
Rating:
Summary: Style AND Substance: a fabulous book
Review: You don't have to read Virginia Postrel's articulate, funny, well-written, well-argued, inventive exploration of surfaces and surfacing desire to know that people all over recognize The Substance of Style.
Exploring the difference between brown worn work shoes and Kenneth Cole patents might seem purely superficial, but the straight guys have tuned into their wives and girlfriends and thus the Queer Eye guys, and tuned out the same critics who for years insisted that the prom queen couldn't be a Nobel laureate.
While observers may think this fascination with the superficial indicates our civilization has gone to hell in a Prada bag, Postrel makes the sensible argument that changing our look--and thus our identity--to create meaning is a fundamental human activity. Her incisive arguments cover topics as diverse as Starbucks, religious objections to makeup, Martha (no last name needed), and Afghani women painting fingernails after the defeat of the Taliban. This book enlightens with its substance, but pleases overwhelmingly with its style.
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